17 comments:

LOVED The Forgotten Garden! The Secret Keeper and The Distant Hours (both also by Kate Morton are FANTASTIC as well). I'm working through the Cast On, Bind Off book by Cap Sease as well this summer. I'm looking forward to reading The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love by Kristin Kimball and trying to find some new authors now that I've exhausted the complete works of all of my recent favorites, haha.

Oh, I didn't love it... and skipped the movie altogether, but it did entertain me! I read it after Mornings in Jenin and needed a book that wouldn't keep me up at night pondering humanity and it's foibles... it definitely fit the bill!

I just finished Call the Midwife, a memoir by a woman who was a midwife in London's East End in the 1950s. Very good. I also liked Paris in Love by Eloisa James, memoir of a professor's sabbatical year in Paris with her husband and teen sin and daughter.

I've enjoyed all of the above this spring. Summer Non-Fiction:Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine BooCooked: A Natural History of Transformation by Michael PollanDeath in the Baltic: WWII Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff by Cathryn PrinceDirty Wars by Jeremy ScahillGood Prose: The Art of Non-Fiction by Tracy Kidder and Richard ToddThe End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light by Paul BogardGulp by Mary Roach

Memoir:After Visiting Friends: A Son’s Story by Michael HaineyHer by Christa ParravaniMemoirs of an Addicted Brain: A Neurochemist Examines his Former Life on Drugs by Marc LewisMy Beloved World by Sonia SotomayorWith or Without You by Domenica RutaThe World’s Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette’s Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family by Josh Hanagarne (out in July)Fiction and short stories:Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson WalkerAnd the Mountains Echoed by Khaled HosseiniDamage Control by Amber DermotInterestings by Meg WolitzerLife After Life by Kate AtkinsonThe Sun by Philipp MeyerTenth of December by George Saunderand The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout (Olive Kittredge)

Recently finished The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. LOVED it! (she knits, too!) Currently reading The Honey Thief by Najaf Mazari, a collection of folk stories from Afghanistan. It has been really interesting so far...funny, educational, horrific, and sweet. Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese is up next. I read the first chapter and was hooked.

For a great series, Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. The series is 7 books and each book is quite long but you're hooked from the minute you start and can't wait to find out what happens next. I actually listen to them as audio books (and highly recommend doing it that way) because the narrator does a great job with the Scottish and English accents, pronouncing Gaelic when it comes up, and just has a beautiful voice. I'm currently listening to the last book in the series, 6 hours left and I am still on the edge of my seat. It's one of those series where you will sit in your car in the driveway/garage (engine off for safety!) when you get home because you can't just stop right in the middle of the action!The books are available at the Audible website; I got the first 5 by checking the audio books out from my local library.